A plan without Marshall

Whether the road to the world passes through Zangezur and who will now play the main role in the South Caucasian political scene

The large press conference of Nikola Pashinyan in Yerevan was waiting for how they were waiting for a long-announced premiere, which over and over again postponed due to the appearance of new turns in the plot. If it happened a month ago, Pashinyan would have been overcome by questions about his struggle with the church. A little later, the excitement would be added in connection with the revealed, as the authorities claimed. But then everything in the South Caucasus intended in such a tight intrigue that the preference in the allocation of the main in itself became a political factor.

In addition, a few days earlier in Abu Dhabi, a meeting of Nikol Pashinyan with the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took place. And all this against the backdrop of an ongoing crisis in the relations of Baku and Moscow, which continues the conflict in Armenia and active discussions of new formats of settlement in the South Caucasus, which is increasingly mentioned by Washington.

Translated from American and vice versa

According to the results of the meeting in the Emirates of Baku and Yerevan, they made identical press releases, in which the entire Armenian-Azerbaijani agenda of recent years was neatly listed. Such unity, in the most literal sense of the word, Baku and Yerevan, had not yet been shown, which gave rise to cautious optimism, but at the same time, the questions were multiplied: what did the parties discuss this within five hours if they showed such solidarity in mutual secrecy?

Meanwhile, a few weeks before that, the Berlin Center of Carnegie* said that the Americans showed interest in settlement. They proposed a logistics company that would deal with the issues of unlocking the so-called Zangesur corridor-a 40-kilometer road, which, passing along the territory of Armenia along its border with Iran, connects Azerbaijan and his exclus Nakhichevan, bordering on Turkey. As an example of such a practice, Abkhazia was given. There, the problems of transportation through its territory were proposed to be transferred to the Swiss company, which would carry out customs control at the entrance and departure from it. However, in Abkhazia, the case did not reach a practical decision, but there the situation is somewhat different.

At the same time, the very appearance of these rumors forced the parties to difficult information maneuvering. Baku remained silent, dosing cautious leaks that he did not experience much delight in this subject. On the eve of the meeting in Abu Dhabi, Yerevan, the lips of the Deputy Foreign Minister, Mnatsakan Safaryan, unexpectedly admitted that he had nothing against such an undertaking, which began to be called “outsourcing”. Around the same time, the first more or less officially officially American proposal was confirmed by the ambassador Tom Barak:

The United States is ready for 100 years to take the road through Armenia to rent. And already, the spokeswoman for Pashinyan Nazili Baghdasaryan answered this practically knocked on this: no outsourcing, and renting is generally in terms of agricultural land.

Telegram channels close to the Armenian authorities also fell upon those who supported the theme of American logistics, although the day before they reminded that the idea of outsourcing Nikol Pashinyan himself proposed back in 2022.

At the press conference, Pashinyan still confirmed: Washington’s proposal is, and it is discussed.

It was no longer clear.

From Gaza to Rwanda

Soon after the meeting in Abu Dhabi, talking with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte about the imminent settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Donald Trump said already-albeit a comma, as part of the announcement of his peacekeeping successes from Gaza to Rwanda, and not very confidently articulating the toponyms not very understandable to him.

However, there are other grounds to suspect that the proposal transferred to Baku and Yerevan is exclusively framework, and the parties are invited to come up with its details. When understanding that the parties may not evaluate the idea. Between the lines in the form of a poorly hidden regret about the possible future of Fiasco, this was felt even in the statement of the American ambassador to Turkey: we proposed a good option, but perhaps the habit of counting tribal ( that’s exactly what it was said. - V. D. ) The interests of the personality can prevail again.

So so far all initiatives look part of the same genre in which Washington has become interested in rare earth elements. Since then, nothing has been heard about the corresponding agreement with Kiev, the joint Ukrainian-American income from Ukrainian minerals in the topic of purchases of American weapons for Ukraine has not appeared in any way.

So from the questions related to the logistics initiative of Washington, Pashinyan leaves, perhaps not for considerations, but simply because there are actually no answers to them. Who and how will carry out border control and customs procedures are still more or less clear here. But who will control the safety on the road itself? Who guarantees Armenia that some specific group of people will not be lost and will not be broken in the district and further? How much will Armenia be informed about the nature of transportation? What will be the legal status of the road, will Armenia be able to use it, how will infrastructure be arranged and who will manage them?

And the most important thing is what both experts and journalists try to understand in Armenia, and, of course, the opposition: how mirror this undertaking is assumed, whether the transit is organized by the same principles in Azerbaijani territory for Armenia, because otherwise it does not receive any benefits from this communication network, no matter how it is the Zangesur Corridor, or, as it is seen in Armenia. "Crossroads of the world"? In any case, until political issues are resolved, the discussion of infrastructures or management features still makes no sense.

And political discussions have a completely different context. And another calendar.

Joker to the elections

The only storyline that is determined by the calendar is the parliamentary elections in Armenia, appointed in June next year, and which promise to become the most dramatic in the highest history of the country, which began after the Karabakh disasters.

Nikol Pashinyan successfully continues the proven political technology of the conversion of the domestic political agenda into the global. Any internal polemic turns into a dispute (for the voter - primary) about the war and the world in which Pashinyan has all the levers and arguments. And no matter how much anyone considers them a betrayal, a lot will say goodbye, while he will be the risk of a new war in an alternative, already in the territory of Armenia itself.

Despite the fact that Baku has no objective reasons for it today, the power of this risk supports in every possible way. And the opposition helps her in this, in every possible way giving the opportunity to interpret any of their revealing criticism as a pushing to war. Attempts by individual oppositionists to present the world in Pashinyan only as one of its varieties, and the worst, until they look convincing. Before the elections, there is another year to fatally make a mistake or run into a fatal accident. But only Pashinyan has a real joker - a peace treaty.

But in order to play the joker profitably, you need the correct time and a successful distribution. Now, a year before the election, it is too early. The beginning of next year, spring is just right. Perhaps that is why today the second most repeatedly among the Armenian authorities after “outsourcing” is “paraffin”-it is about it, about the agreement on the final edition of the peaceful, albeit without signing, the contract, apparently, was said at the meeting in Abu Dhabi.

The question is what such a service will require Baku from Yerevan.

He does not really need the contract - if there are no words about surrender, but they will not be. Delimitation of the border will be taken into account taking into account its winning interests, albeit without obvious excesses. By and large, he already solved all the tasks. In addition to communications. Which he needs, but even more needed by Turkey. Probably, it was in this format that representatives of Ankara, Baku and Yerevan worked, sharing their impressions with Brussels and stimulating Washington.

But it would be some underestimation of the situation to consider that all this happened during the final suspension from the negotiation process of Moscow.

Far from Moscow

The temptation to take “after” for “as a result” is an immense, especially when in fact everything is full of such coincidences. And if in the described time and under the described circumstances in Yekaterinburg, the raid on ethnic Azerbaijanis begins (and in Yerevan, we repeat the conspiracy against Pashinyan), it means that everything is not accidental, and this, of course, is the reaction of Moscow.

Meanwhile, even from a chronological point of view, not everything converges. The attack on the church in Armenia began long before rumors about American logistics, and until the authorities gave this process of geopolitical significance, these events took place exclusively in the domestic political category. From a political point of view, it is still less convincing. Neither the obvious possibilities of the change of Pashinyan, nor the practical meaning in this event are visible for Moscow. It is still impossible to return to the South Caucasus the format that was before the Karabakh vicissitudes, and in the Kremlin this is probably understood. And Pashinyan, who quite predictably alternates a meeting in Brussels with a Victory Parade in Moscow, is much more than he may seem under the influence of speeches by Vladimir Solovyov and Margarita Simonyan.

And even less obvious bonuses from exacerbation with Azerbaijan. No matter how much the relationship between Baku and Moscow happened - and everything happened, both sides proceeded from the tradition of the historical fraternity of the elites, from the most communist times. Azerbaijan has always been to the Kremlin the main prize in the Caucasus, which has long been to handle with special care. In a word, in order for leaders to cancel the beating of the dishes at any time (and this option remains the main one today), the conflict must be controlled. Especially today, when Moscow loses more from its continuation than Azerbaijan.

In the eyeballs of Yekaterinburg history, the Kremlin could immediately extinguish everything, but did not. Firstly, it is not at all a fact that I would agree to such a bacu bacus. And secondly, Moscow probably remembers that she considered Aliyev’s visit to the parade on May 9 as a sign of reconciliation, and at the last moment he preferred to evade from reconciliation, demonstrating who actually controls the conflict and schedule of his decision. And if so, Moscow could decide, if it still doesn’t work out and it is necessary to survive it, then it remains only to extract at least some benefit, which is easiest, as usual, to make in a patriotic genre. But this is not the main thing.

Moscow, indeed, lost the initiative in the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, which means that in a fair amount and in the main projects-communication, the leader of which was expected to become after the end of the Karabakh war.

And, indeed, through the efforts of Baku, with the support of Turkey and with a certain interest of Yerevan, who, in the issue of the Zangesur corridor, perceived Moscow for too long as a situational ally of Baku.

But the South Caucasian process becomes much wider - this is no longer a closed system in which any game is doomed to zero amount. This is a system of ephemeral balances, polyhedron agreements, ambiguous signals. Here Moscow and Ankara are discussing Caucasian logistics, and there - say, Syria or sanctions. Themes are connected among themselves according to their bizarre logic.

In the same way, with Azerbaijan, bidding and conflicts develop in a variety of directions. This is a process with an eternal continuation, with new turns and layouts. The meeting in Abu Dhabi is called the first in a bilateral format, but more precisely, it will be said that for the first time all interested parties chose to stay in the shade. In the non -public part, it was unlikely that there were no complicated contact system, in which, one way or another, at different levels and with varying degrees of involvement, all participants in this very large, confusing and multi -criterion game participated.

But no matter what was happening on stormy sidelines, on the field, indeed, both sides were for the first time. And, probably, for the first time no one offered them a summons - they painted it themselves, albeit on the basis of raw recommendations, with an eye on conflicting interests. But on the basis of first of all, from what can be extracted for themselves from all this multi -body. So far, apparently, little. But if there is good news, then at least that no one needs to rush, as it happens in matters of war and peace.

* The Carnegie Foundation is recognized in the Russian Federation “Ino -Anterian” and is included in the list of undesirable organizations.